Wither Bonneville?

Thanks to the Ice Age, we were given the Bonneville Salt Flats upon which thousands of land speed racers have enjoyed nearly a century of high-speed, record-setting fun and excitement. The world's biggest racetrack, some 4,214 feet above sea level, is also the world's largest natural "dynamometer."

On the salt, the Bonneville long course, 2002.

Located immediately east of the Nevada-Utah border town of Wendover, the vast, ancient lake bed is a stark, glistening white plain that was once covered by a body of water 135 miles wide by nearly 325 miles long. Much smaller today, the Bonneville Salt Flats remain an awe-inspiring geologic phenomenon where after a rainstorm full, 180-degree, vivid rainbows appear. Mother Nature left some 6,000 acres of "flat track" that is so hard that it takes a two-handed, half-inch drill to bore through the rock hard, concrete-like surface.

Bonneville was first "discovered" by bicyclists, and then motorcycle racers as the country entered the 20th century. The First Race, in 1914, came about when racing promoter Ernie Moross brought a fleet of eight racing machines to Salt Lake City. He convinced the local racing community that a speed event on the flats would bring welcome attention to Utah using his roving "motor circus."

The jewel in Moross's stable was the mighty 2.5-liter, 300-horsepower record-setting Blitzen Benz, once driven by Barney Oldfield, but now under the command of "Terrible" Teddy Tetzlaff, a noted lead foot of the day. Billie Carlson, Harry Goetz and Wilbur D'Alene drove a collection of Marmon Wasps and Maxwells.

Since there was no road across the flats the railroad was tapped to transport the cars to the salt. Ads in the local papers announced the August 11th event: "A hair-raising, thrilling, soul-gripping speed contest. This run is not phony - everything is square, honest and above board. Bring your own watches and check up on the official timers. You'll get the kick of a lifetime!"

Timing was done with a series of stopwatches, according to AAA Contest Board rules, but many spectators also brought their own, so nearly two dozen watches were snapped on the cars. On Tetzlaff's first attempt, he matched "Wild Bob" Burman's world record speed exactly, but in less time, only 25 2/5 seconds - a 1/5 of a second quicker than Burman. Tetzlaff's half-mile speed was even higher - 142.8 mph!

The run ushered in an epochal chapter to auto racing. For the first time a speed trial was recorded on the Bonneville Salt Flats - at a world record speed, no less. The speed went unrecorded in the record books because no "official observer" from the AAA Contest Board was on-site to verify the procedures. Nevertheless, news of "Terrible Teddy's" world-record-level speeds spread, sowing seeds of curiosity about the godforsaken western wasteland that gobbled up wheel spin and spit out speed.

However, because no infrastructure existed, the salt was ignored for another decade in favor of Daytona Beach. Bonneville will never be a hospitable place for human beings. Temperatures climb above 100 degrees during the day and can drop below 50 degrees at night. The sun beats down ferociously, reflecting the rays back up from the white surface to cook unsuspecting and unprotected body parts. Without eye protection, be ready for "salt blindness" because "bright" takes on new meaning here.

No matter how hot the air gets, the surface is always cool and moist to the touch - a boon for racing tires that build up friction heat at high speeds. Because wheels can't dig into the surface as easily as dirt, the granite-like salt also helps to keep race vehicles upright to hopefully, only "spin-out" and not rollover.

Utahn David "Ab" Jenkins, (1883-1956) came to understand this point and led a 20 year crusade to put the Bonneville Salt Flats on the international racing map. Not a pitch man, Jenkins was holder and breaker of more world records than any other driver, past or present. Noteworthy is that his exhausting 48-hour endurance record still stands to this very day.

Jenkins was most likely the first person catch "salt fever" when, in 1925, he accepted a bet to race a train from Salt Lake City to Wendover, Utah, some 125 miles, to commemorate the opening of the Victory Highway, which we today know as Interstate 80.

Driving a black Studebaker roadster shod with the newly developed balloon tires, his passengers included a Miss McCafferty, secretary to the local Studebaker dealer, and in the back seat was Salt Lake City policeman Tommy Dee. Along the way, as Jenkins passed each of the 15 railroad crossings, Dee's job was to toss out a small bag of flour that would splatter onto the ground. If the train riders saw white, they knew the car was in the lead.

The "highway" was little more than packed gravel, and even with 12-inch ground clearance, Jenkins repeatedly scraped the undercarriage. Hanging on for dear life itself was spindly little Officer Dee, clinging to the strap in the back. Jenkins noted "Dee twisted and turned like a circus chimpanzee on a trapeze bar, and twice was thrown into the front seat headfirst."

As it worked out, the train passengers always saw flour when they came to a crossing. Rattling into town under the arch like a brass band out of tune, Jenkins and crew arrived in Wendover five minutes before the train puffed into town. Normally, the trip took five and one-half hours, but Jenkins only needed two hours and 40 minutes.

Despite the new highway, again racers ignored the salt flats until 1931 when Jenkins single-handedly drove a 12-cylinder Pierce-Arrow for 24-hours to what should have been a new world endurance record. He convinced the Utah State Road Commission to survey and scrape smooth a 10-mile circular track that was marked with 4-foot stakes spaced 100 feet apart. The course was lit for night driving using small, evenly spaced oil flares.

Dressed in white cotton duck pants and shirt topped with a leather jacket, Jenkins donned a cotton skullcap and two pairs of goggles, and climbed into the hopped-up motorcar. He stopped for gas 12 times, experienced no mechanical trouble, never changed a tire, or got up from behind the wheel the entire 24 hours. The constant roar of the engine made him temporarily deaf. The AAA Contest Board could care less and sniffed its official nose at the speed runs.

Jenkins would not be thwarted and went back the next year even though Pierce-Arrow executives laughed when he said he could log 2,400 miles in 24 hours. He was wrong, the numbers worked out to 2,710 miles in 24 hours with an average speed of 112.935 miles per hour. AAA finally relented and Jenkins' efforts were validated.

In 1933, he snapped up 56 new records in one attempt on the 10-mile circle track. The feat riveted the attention of European racers whose tracks were no longer able to support the rising speeds needed to set endurance records. Foremost among them was John Rhodes Cobb, who immediately made plans to personally inspect the salt beds. Many simply refused to believe one man could have driven throughout. After all, the records set in Europe had required as many as five drivers and Jenkins set his records all by himself.

Jenkins made it look easy. To break up the monotony of a driving for 24 straight hours, he would dash off a quick note from the tablet secured to the center of the steering wheel and send it flying as he passed the pit area. One of the crew would retrieve the slip of paper to see what the boss wanted.

Once he directed the crew to send a telegram to a friend in New York. Another asked for a pint of ice cream, so a crew member beat it back to town for some frozen "Mormon heroin." The note also bid a crewman run alongside the car and hand off the bag as he passed the pit - at over 100mph. When Jenkins reached for the bag, his hand smashed it to smithereens, numbing his arm for hours.

Next, he designed and built the "Ab Jenkins Special," a 235-hp Pierce-Arrow 12 that had "more blueprints than a house," Jenkins was back at the salt in August of 1934 and improved his 24-hour marks. He averaged 127 miles per hour and covered 3,053 miles.

Jenkins finally approached Malcolm Campbell, the most celebrated racing driver of the time, who already held eight World Land Speed Records. The speed king's latest car, "Bluebird," was powered by a seven-foot-long, 1,630 pound Rolls Royce V12 engine that produced 2,500 horsepower. Measuring 28-feet three inches in length, it weighed close to 11,000 pounds and needed supplemental air brake flaps behind the rear wheels to stop the behemoth.

Daytona's soft, undulating sand was robbing the car of precious speed by inducing tremendous wheel spin. Jenkins promised Campbell he'd easily reach his 300mph mark on the salt. Campbell took him at his word and on September 3, 1935, Daytona Beach was finished as a World Record site when Campbell nailed a new, but his last, World Land Speed Record of 301.129 miles per hour.

The Brits kept coming back, bumping up the WLSR mark and trying to get ahead of Jenkins with his ever-elongating string of endurance records, which now included one with an Allis-Chalmers tractor! With each new record Bonneville's prominence on the world racing stage grew. In less than one season, the voluptuous velocity salt feast added more tasty endurance records than Daytona, or its European counterparts, could manage in a decade.

This is not to say the job was easy. Few understood that because the 12 and one-half mile circle track was not banked, it put considerable stress upon driver and car. The vehicle was always "rounding a curve," inducing whopping steady amounts of the centrifugal force determined to push the car into an outward skid.

To stay ahead of the Brits, Jenkins was forced to use a 700 horsepower Curtiss Conqueror engine. Christened "Mormon Meteor II," in 1936, he set new marks for every record from 50 miles to 48-hours inclusive - 72 records all together.

In 1939, Mormon Meteor III debuted, dressed in a striking new blue and orange paint job. It was the last of Jenkins purpose-built race cars, assembled by Augie Duesenberg and 17-year-old Marvin Jenkins.

At 56, Jenkins persisted in astonishing the racing community with his driving prowess by nailing down a new 12-hour record, but not before a failed u-joint caught fire and put Jenkins in the hospital for a week. (Authors Note: This car has recently received a stunningly complete restoration from the heroic efforts of Marvin Jenkins and may return to race on the salt again.)

When not trying to set endurance records, Cobb and Eyston battled for domination of the flying mile crown driving cars that were as different as "chalk and cheese." Eyston's "Thunderbolt" was a five-gallon-a-minute, fuel-gulping eight-wheeled monster car, while Cobb's "Railton," a flat teardrop shaped streamliner was dwarfed in comparison. Cobb relied on dual 1,250 horsepower Napier aircraft engines, the British equivalent of an Allison engine, that had a total of 2,921 cubic inches of displacement - half that of Eyston's 4,925-CID Thunderbolt.

The duo pushing up the bar from 300 to 367 before the bottom-feeding Nazi's pushed the world into the second World War which brought racing to a screeching halt. After the war, especially in southern California, young adults were modifying automobile bodies and tinkering with engines at a breakneck pace. These neophyte "Hot Rodders," conducted speed trials on dry lake beds, but as their speeds rose, so did the need for more space for safety's sake. After John Cobb ratcheted up the World Record to 394 mph in 1947, the hot rodders made a bid to use the salt.

Starting humbly in 1949, "Speed Week" lit a racing fuse that continues to sizzle annually. Hosted by the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), the event today attracts the fastest car on earth that come to assault a myriad of speed records.

SCTA, an all-volunteer group dedicated to preserving amateur racing, is the banner under which hundreds of people have devoted millions of hours throughout the past half-century to ensure the sport continues to be safe and full of high-speed fun. One San Diego race enthusiast, Bob Higbee, has volunteered for every event. For 51 straight years, "perfect attendance" Higbee has set-up every Bonneville and never left for home before the tear-down work detail was finished.

As the 50s unfolded, the revered Ford Flathead was replaced Chrysler's new Hemi and Chevrolet's small block. The virtues of steel tubing were discovered and safety items like roll-bars, safety belts, helmets and belly pans came into regular use. Before the end of the decade parachutes made their appearance. Carburetion gave way to fuel-injection, the most remarkable set-up developed by Stuart Hilborn whose equipment is still in demand today. Like Hilborn, many got out of the driver's seat and hunkered down in workshops giving birth to the performance aftermarket.

Bonneville junkies have come to understand that from the moment they commit themselves to the salt, Providence moves with them. People and parts appear in unlikely ways, and although its no free ride, it is an interesting one just getting ready to go. Another of the sport's distinguishing characteristic is the uncanny level of camaraderie shared by friends and strangers alike. The goal is speed, whether you get it, or someone else does, the point is to get there. If parts on one car can assist another, the parts willingly change cars, many times without regard to compensation.

Imagine, a whole week with nothing to do but go as fast as you can as many times as you can. Heaven. Sheer heaven. Pure Speed. Bulky bull-dog roadsters, skinny lakesters, bulbous belly tanks, puffy coupes and snazzy sports cars. Dazzling streamliners, as dangerous as they are fast, join itty bitty motorcycles and honking great semi trucks . . ., they all come to the salt and put on the greatest speed show on earth.

The pivotal point of the first event in 1949, centered around the streamliner of Alex Xydias and Dean Batchelor. Converted from the SO-Cal Speed Shop's belly tank into a fully streamlined race car and stuffed with an Edelbrock V8 Mercury engine, the car changed the course of land speed racing.

Batchelor's first run was 185.95 miles per hour backed up with a 187.89 miles per hour to drop the collective racing jaw - the speeds were 20 miles per hour fastest than any dry lakes racer had ever gone. When Batchelor hit a top speed of 193.54 miles per hour Bonneville became the place to race if speed was your need. SCTA Manager Wally Parks, who went on to found the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), drove the Burke-Francisco belly tank to earn the honor of being the very first driver to spin out on the salt course.

When drag racing arrived the salt witnessed a mass exodus of enthusiasts who preferred the wham-quick, slam-squawk burst of speed out a quarter-mile run. The 200MPH Club was created as a way to recognize the remarkable speed achievements of hot rodders. A modest five members were inducted in 1953 and nearly 400 have earned membership as of 1999, including six women.

Mickey Thompson heard about the Xydias-Batchelor success and went crazy with envy. "The people who went, loved it," recalled Ak Miller, now 78, who still tries to smoke cars off the line, "We could race flat-out and the cars would disappear over the horizon taking their exhaust note with them, following the black line up and over the peak power curve."

The 1949 speed trails had 60 entries competing in less than a dozen classes, by 1999, the record setting hopefuls had grown to more than 300 spread out across dozens of classes as racers experimented with speed set-ups.

Little by little, "speed secrets" were developed. By the mid-fifties, the acrid, nose-wrinkling, eye-watering nitromethane, a.k.a. "liquid dynamite," began to show up in engines. The exotic fuel charges helped push up speeds, but also chewed up parts as the racers struggled to discover the proper blends. Superchargers and turbochargers went in and out of vogue, depending on the budget. For years, finding reliable high-speed tires, plagued the land speed racers. Eventually Firestone, then Goodyear jumped in with product and today even Mickey Thompson's name graces a few sidewalls.

Ab Jenkins was 73 years of age in 1956, when Pontiac had a new coupe ready for market and thought a couple endurance records might boost sales. Jenkins shared the driving chores with 36 year-old son, Marvin, and the pair shattered every record American mark up to 24-hours averaging 118 miles per hour over 2,841 miles. GM officials responded and dubbed new car "Bonneville."

The early 60's saw a shootout for the World Land Speed Record where the piston motors would forever be separated out from the ultimate speed fight. Jet engines replaced piston motors and the unlimited record exploded upwards from 394 mph to 600 mph. Names like Craig Breedlove, Art and Walt Arfons dominated the record books. Gary Gabelich climbed in the Blue Flame rocket car in 1970 and although he never knew it, became the last American to hold record with a 622 mph average.

In a valiant attempt to keep the spotlight focused on the traditional, wheel-driven efforts, brothers Bob and Bill Summers uncorked a 409 mph average on November 12, 1965, with "Goldenrod." A brilliantly engineered and executed streamliner, it was powered by four fuel-injected in-line Chrysler Hemi's, coupled together in pairs, back-to-back together putting out more than 2,400 horsepower.

The Jets weren't the only threat. It was becoming clear that after decades of mining, the salt was shrinking and worse, becoming wafer-thing in spots. Racers banded together to form the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association (USFRA) in an effort to stage more racing on the flats in order to "keep an eye on things."

Later,"Save the Salt" a non-profit organization was created that eventually prevailed in getting business to start putting the salt back where they got it after they extracted various minerals. The five-year test project is already producing positive, restorative results. If the trend continues, it may be possible to bring back World Records cars to the salt, but the group struggles to survive financially.

Britain's Richard Noble, stripped Bonneville of its prominence when in 1983, he set a new World Land Speed Record of 633.468 miles per hour on Nevada's Black Rock Desert and then RAF pilot Andy Green pushed the mark to 763 mph in 1997 over the same piece of real estate. Bonneville, like Daytona Beach before it, had "been replaced" as the site for ultimate LSR attempts.

The fastest car on the salt in 1999 was white-haired Don Vesco, 61, who reminds you of an adolescent Beaver Cleaver, not a guy closing in on social security benefits. Together with his brother Rick, they set Top Speed of the 1999 season of 438 mph with Turbinator, a 31-foot turbine-powered, wheel-driven streamliner.

Current World Land Speed Record holder for wheel-driven cars, Al Teague (409mph), believe the brothers stand an excellent chance to topple his record. What's more, he is cheering them on. Only at Bonneville, only in land speed racing will you find one competitor heartily supporting another to beat them.

As the young men who had pioneered salt racing evolved into "seniors speed citizens" their children and even grand childredn took up the speed chase, donning helmets and strapping in to take their turn down the long, black line. The roster for the fast families include, among others, Lindsley, Kugel, Burke, Miller, Cook, Martin, Arnet, Vesco, Thayer, Rochlitzler, White, Stringfellow, Fergusen, Temple, Arias, Batchelor, Hammond, Dolan, Jeffries, and Sable.

Land Speed Racing is a hypnotic magnet. It has attracted participants come from all over the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England and Japan. Among them, great names from every other segment of motorsports: Phil Hill, Sterling Moss, Don Garlits, A.J. Foyt, Paul Newman, the Unsers.

They do it all for bragging right, a timing slip and maybe, a trophy. Sponsorships? Ha! Most Bonneville racers dig down deep into their own pockets make their dreams a reality. A rare, thriving slice of Americana, it embraces a wide, cross-section of the population and will remain an evocative slice of American life for as long as the amateur racers, their kit and kin, continue to contribute.